[whatwg] The div element

Fri Feb 29 22:07:35 PST 2008

Sorry for the double for those of you on both lists. I sent a reply to
the wrong mailing list again :(

On 01/03/2008, Nicholas C. Zakas <html at nczonline.net> wrote:
> From this description, it seems like the <section/> element has little use.
> If you're talking about writing articles, most authors consider the start
> and end of sections as implicitly defined by headings. Making this explicit
> seems unnecessary so long as headings are still available and used. It's
> just extra syntax to represent something that is more easily represented
> without it.

Sections allow some things that are impossible with the outline
hierarchy of HTML4. In HTML4, once you had a header you needed a
header of the same level or higher to make a paragraph not belong to
that header. With sections you can make paragraphs belong to headers
above the immediately preceeding one. You can have paragraphs that do
not belong where they would in the HTML4 outline hierarchy. For
example you can have a third level header as direct child of a first
level header in the outline, even if there is a second level header
before it.

Sections allow stopping the association between a header and all that
comes after it at some point. HTML4 outline hierarchy couldn't do
this.

Section is as I recall an idea imported from XHTML2. From what I
understood, sections were originally meant to relate to sections of
the information content as differentiated from divisions of the
document structure.
--
David "liorean" Andersson